37signals buys Apple iPhone app for Campfire; makes it free

37signals has purchased the Apple iPhone app Ember and the company has retooled the Campfire-chatting app and made it free.

If you’ve never used Campfire, it’s a private chat room that can be used by businesses for collaboration and coordination. We use it here at IntoMobile, as do many other tech blogs, and our chats are often filled with deep, philosophical tech talk and filthy name calling. It has also become an essential tool for lining up coverage and a stellar mobile app would be of great use to many of us.

Earlier this year we started talking to them about buying Ember. They were into the idea. We worked out a deal, made a few changes to the app, submitted to the App Store. Yesterday Ember officially became 37signals Campfire for iPhone.

As an added bonus, we’ve dropped the price from $9.99 to $0.00. Campfire for iPhone is free (Ember was priced at $9.99).

I downloaded the program on my iPod Touch and found it quite easy to use to access multiple chat rooms, as well as for searching for content. You’ll also be able to upload photos, there’s support for SSL accounts and you can get inline view of multiple file formats.

At the price, it’s worth checking out if you use that chatting program for work.